File No. 861.00/2589
The Consul at Archangel (Cole) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 27.]
Sir: I have the honor to report that at 5 o’clock on the afternoon of July 20, the British Consul learned that two parties of Allied subjects, soldiers and sailors, including one officer, had been captured by the Bolsheviks near Archangel and were then in the city. It was added that they were to be shot the following morning. In order to verify this report and save the men should it prove well-founded, the British Consul, the French Consul, and myself immediately proceeded to the railroad station across the river to the special train in which was living People’s Commissar Kedrov, who is at Archangel under special authority granted him as one of the Council of People’s Commissars and is in full charge of all Soviet [Page 501] activities here. It would appear that the facts of the matter are these, based on the statement made by Kedrov and afterwards partially verified through other sources in the city. About July 15 a Serbian soldier and a Canadian soldier from Kem were arrested near the Nikolski monastery a few miles west of the Dvina River delta. These two men, it is stated, bore false Russian passports and both spoke Russian perfectly, both being the sons of Russian mothers, and brought up in Russia. It is said the two admitted, probably under considerable pressure, that they had been sent by the British military at Kem to discover likely spots along the coast for “agitators” to land. They further are said to have declared that in a few days a small boat would come from Kem to take them back. The Russians lay in wait for this boat and stopped it when it came by a blank shot from a large armed yacht, the Gorislava. From the small boat from Kem, a former Russian tug, the Mitrofan, were taken a sublieutenant of the British Navy and five sailors from H.M.S. Attentive, all in uniform.
Commissar Kedrov admitted that the men had been arrested but stated that they were not to be shot as he had decided to send them to Moscow. The way in which he said this left us to understand that he considered he was justified in having the men summarily executed had he so deemed best, and that he had, in fact, thought of so doing but had changed his mind. As agreed upon among us, the British Consul immediately declared that, as there was a state of peace between Great Britain and Serbia on one side and Russia on the other, it would have been unjustifiable, since in peace time espionage (the charge against the men) was not judiciable by court-martial but was for trial by civil criminal law unless the accused was a member of the army or a subject of the nation against which the act was committed. Kedrov claimed there were precedents for the contrary and went on to reproach the British with having acted in even a more flagrant way than the shooting of two spies caught red-handed; namely, in having arrested three members of a local government organ during one of its sessions and summarily executing them. He referred, of course, to the alleged shooting of the three members of the Kem County Council of Workmen’s Deputies. He went on to declare that experience had shown that every time a local body, against the wish of the central authority, had invited outside aid, the outsider had soon made himself master and had overthrown the body which invited him in. He cited the Ukraine, the Caucasus, made some vague reference to Japan, and ended by saying that the recent events in Kem and on the west coast of the White Sea had justified that theory, as the British and French “had proven themselves no better than the Germans” (his exact [Page 502] words). He then cited the events, in proof of his statement, that were mentioned in my despatch of July 191. … He said an almost de facto state of war existed there.
On the British Consul’s requesting an interview with the men, Kedrov declined, stating that it was necessary to keep the men’s statements secret “in order to forestall other events.” He did, however, give the names of as many of them as he had at hand in his car, and stated that had he decided to shoot them he would have allowed them an interview with their Consul the night before their execution.
It is learned to-day that the men were sent to Moscow yesterday. Before their departure they were allowed to receive food from the British Consulate.
It is significant that not only does the name of America rarely appear in the newspaper diatribes and in the poster proclamations against the “foreign invaders,” the “imperialistic vultures,” etc., etc., but that Kedrov also failed to mention America in his remarks about the Allies and the Germans above quoted. In fact he did not use the word “Allies” at all, confining himself always to either “England,” “France” or “Anglo-French” and “Franco-English.”
I have [etc.]